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X. oRIGINAL Bp A $It! The Essential Fireplace Tool r=- 1-800-601-6642 www.blopoke.com .:::. The Retreat at Sheppard Pratt C/fÓ Þ daM Þ axw/d daM CUðØ .. psychotherapeutic milieu .. Intermediate length of stay .. Private pay setting in Baltimore, MD 410-938-4040 www.retreatatsp.org 180 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 24, 2006 seems to have been weathered for his role by an old-fashioned saddler-a kinder treatment than that meted out to Dennis Qgaid, who sports the clenched and stuffed demeanor that usually fol- lows an injection of embalming fluid. Add the hot beams of the television stu- dio, as unforgiving as searchlights on a prison watchtower, and the portrait of a culture that has been drained of natural energy by a fixation with surface detail is complete. As played by Qgaid, the President is a floundering buffoon, cut adrift from the electorate and reliant, with no more than a twinge of unease, on his hector- ing chief of staff (Willem Dafoe), who feeds him lines for public declamation through an earpiece. This is just a wild guess, but are we meant to be reminded of a real President? If so, it feels too easy, almost as simplistic in its sneering as the simplemindedness that it affects to de- spise; "American Dreamz" will be music to the ears of many Bush-bashers, but the best satire should box everybody's ears. Just to make matters more peculiar, there is a squirt of sentimental populism, with the President sensing the error of his ways and struggling, through hon- esty and self-education, to square himself with the truth about the Middle East. He even makes a noble effort to halt the detonation of Orner's bomb. Film histo- rians might be touched to see that, how- ever scathing a modern director yearns to be, the spirit of Frank Capra will still find a way in, but audiences, I suspect, will walk away confused. What kind of movie are they being asked to watch? Is it a farce, or a call to arms? And, given the scant attention that it pays to Tweed's hit show, and to the mechanics of how a tal- ent program is constructed, is Weitz re- ally interested in TV, or is he merely air- ing his dislike? Any attempt to defend "Ameri- can Dreamz" for its political venom, or for the surfeit of its surreal conceits, is doomed to founder on a single, ob- structive fact: this picture ain't funny. I winced three times, and gave a couple of short laughs, but that was it. (The look of dawning disgust on Tweed's face as the President's earpiece pops out is es- pecially good, like something out of a medieval morality play: the devil regard- ing the fool.) The problem is the old one of smugness: how do you set your- self up in judgment without coming across as superior? To be fair, better filmmakers than Weitz have stubbed their toes on this conundrum. W orship- pers of "Dr. Strangelove," for instance, tend to fight shy of the awkwardness that comes from seeing an ambitious comedy created by a humorless artist. Most of the fun in that movie springs not from Kubrick but from Peter Sell- ers; the rest of it is cold and cavernous grandeur, overlaid by a studentish con- viction that the world is run by lonely, nervous madmen. Qgite unlike a film set, of course. Or a TV studio. At its climax, "American Dreamz" hurries into chaos, not that we mind how it ends. There have been so many false notes in the development of the main characters that their fates can scarcely concern us. Why bother to present Mar- tin Tweed as a sabre-toothed rogue and then ask us to believe that he would keep his hands off Sally-whom he chival- rously calls "a dirty little bitch"-until the last minute? The actors who emerge with the most credit are those portraying Arabs: Sam Golzari, who captures the sweat and stammer of the eternal ama- teur, and Tony Yalda, who plays Iqbal, Orner's cousin and latterly his manager, and who seems to have decided that the neatest way to calVe through the mixed messages of "American Dreamz" is to camp it up-hair-tossing, his own disco glitter ball, the works. Until I saw Iqbal, I never knew that it was possible to flounce while sitting down. It takes so little dar- ing or originality to satirize a cheesy tal- ent show; but to take that satire and act as if it were a cheesy talent show-now, that takes nelVe. Ladies and gendemen, our WInner. T here is one overriding reason to see "I Am a Sex Addict," and it has nothing to do with sex. That sounds un- likely, given that the whole film is about the extent to which sex can, like diet- ing or accountancy, consume your wak- ing life and feed your dreams. As with the 2003 "Tarnation," the movie is an auto-documentary, a genre of which we will be seeing a lot more-thanks to the advances in digital technology-as the poor in spirit, the meek, the persecuted, and the downright narcissistic venture to bare their lives on film. The discom- fort provoked by "T arnation," though,